"TECHNO-UTOPIANISM and the Fate of the Earth"

Selected Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine audio recordings from:
The International Forum on Globalization's conference, Oct. 25, 2014, Cooper Union, New York City

"UNSTOPPABLE": Ralph Nader talk, interview July 26, 2014

Listen to Ralph Nader's 75 min. talk and interview about his new book, "Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State" at Barnes and Noble, Milford, Connecticut. Nader makes a compelling case for left-right alliances on majoritarian issues that progressives and conservatives agree on, acknowledging that individuals feel all too often that they are powerless against the big power structure. He notes that issues such as school prayer, reproductive rights and gun control are issues that the power structure depends on to keep the majority divided. The minimum wage, breaking up the big banks, Pentagon audits, health care, campaign finance reform, corporate tax inversions, Net Neutrality, fracking and GMOs are just a few examples of left-right issues discussed with the audience. He says just a fraction of the left and right – working together – can make a huge "unstoppable" political realignment in passing legislation, despite the "ick factor" of working with those whose other views they don't always agree with.

Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine was at the Left Forum, May 30 - June 1, 2014, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

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JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Obama Threat Against Syria Based on Maintaining U.S. 'Credibility'

Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine at the Left Forum, June 7-9, Pace University, New York City

A speech by 2012 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein at the opening plenary session of the 2013 Left Forum in New York City, on the conference theme: "Mobilizing for Ecological and Economic Transformation" (28:36)

A speech by Noam Chomsky provides a global political analysis on this year's Left Forum conference theme "Mobilizing for Ecological/Economic Transformation". Noam Chomsky is a US political theorist and activist, and institute professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Besides being known as the "father of modern linguistics," Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today.(1:07:06)

SPECIAL AUDIO RECORDING:Bill McKibben, environmental activist and founder of 350.org talks about the next steps in the climate change campaign

An address by Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, upon receiving the annual Gandhi Peace Award from the New Haven-based group Promoting Enduring Peace on April 18 in Hamden, CT

Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with "The End of Nature" in 1989, which is regarded as the first book for a general audience on climate change. The group he founded, 350.org, has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. The Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was "probably the country’s most important environmentalist."

SPECIAL AUDIO RECORDING: Alexis Tsipras, leader of Greece's Left Party Coalition, on "Anti-Austerity Politics in Greece, Europe and Beyond"

A talk recorded on Jan. 25, 2013 at The City University of New York, in a program sponsored by CUNY's Center for the Study of Culture, Technology, and Work.

Alexis Tsipras, a member of the Hellenic parliament, president of the Synaspismos political party since 2008, head of the SYRIZA parliamentary group since 2009, and leader of the Opposition since June 2012. SYRIZA currently leads in Greek opinion polls. Listen to the audio here.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live,
weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines'
interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m.
EDT at www.WPKN.org
(Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET
Monday nights,
and is available for at least a year following broadcast in
WPKN Radio's Archives.

Special Programming

MP3: Glenn Greenwald delivers a keynote address at "A Conference in Defense of Civil Liberties and to End Indefinite Detention" at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain on Dec. 8, 2012.

Glenn Greenwald is a columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the Guardian newspaper. He's a former constitutional lawyer, and until 2012 was a contributing writer at Salon.com. Greenwald is the author of "With Liberty and Justice For Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."

Read his column at The Guardian (UK)
Between The Lines' executive producer Scott Harris conducted an interview with Glenn Greenwald at the conference.
Noam Chomsky is linguistics and philosophy professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Author of nearly 100 books, Chomsky is one of the world's most widely read progressive dissident intellectuals. He talks about his new book, "Occupy," about the Occupy Wall Street movement and the wider issues of class warfare in the America today.Listen to this interview (June 6, 2011)MP3: Nathan Schneider
(www.wagingnonviolence.org)
has been reporting on the OWS movement from its first days in August,
2011. In this April 3, 2012 interview, Richard Hill asks him to assess
the on-going debate in the movement between those espousing a strict
adherence to non-violence principles and practices and those advocating
a 'diversity of tactics', Interview conducted by Richard Hill, WPKN

Is the Wall Street Occupation a Spark that Can Ignite a New U.S. Economic Justice Movement?

Interview with Chris Hedges, author of "The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress", UPDATED and with NEW LINKs (9/30/11 below) , conducted by Scott Harris

In the months after the near collapse of the U.S. financial and banking system in 2008 that triggered the most serious global economic meltdown since the Great Depression, America has witnessed an uneasy silence suggesting either trauma or stunned acquiescence among the general populace. While polls find that the population at large blames the recklessness of wealthy bankers and speculators for record unemployment and home foreclosures, the only real anger expressed in the streets in recent years has come from corporate-backed Tea Party activists bent on defunding social safety net programs while labeling President Obama a Muslim-socialist, and attacking unions.

With the exception of public sector labor unions that were forced to mobilize in Wisconsin and Ohio after Republican governors in those states attempted to eliminate labor’s collective bargaining rights, the U.S. left has remained largely quiet, with little in the way of protests focused on demanding accountability for those that crashed the economy. But on Sept. 17, the near silence was broken when several hundred mostly young activists executed a long-planned peaceful “occupation” by setting up an encampment near the New York Stock Exchange in Zucotti Park, a space they renamed “Liberty Plaza.” Despite mass arrests and clear cases of unprovoked physical abuse at the hands of police, the activists on Wall Street continue their occupation.

"Occupiers" there are daily engaged in an open-air dialogue to agree on a unified set of demands. But what brought them together was a common anger at a system where jobs and homes disappeared while stock brokers and CEOs got rich, even as no bankers have gone to jail for their economic crimes. The Wall Street action has spawned support nationwide with nearly 50 groups forming overnight, with plans to launch similar "occupations" in their own cities. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Chris Hedges, who recently visited “Liberty Plaza” to express his support. Here he explains why he believes that the occupation of Wall Street and similar militant actions are the only hope for America.

CHRIS HEDGES:
People are doing something, they're rising up against this corrupt financial system that seized control not only of our economy and our political process, but our judiciary and our systems of information. And are dismantling everything that we have in place to create neo-feudalistic society. Looting the U.S. Treasury, trashing the ecosystem. In theological terms, these are systems of death because they know no limit. Karl Marx was right, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force which turns everything into a commodity. Human beings become commodities, the natural world becomes a commodity that you exploit until exhaustion or collapse. And because are there no impediments within the formal structures of power, unless we begin to engage in acts of civil disobedience we will not thwart the destruction that is being unleashed by corporate power.

So, is this the spark? I don't know. I hope so, but if this isn't the spark, the spark is coming, because an increasing number of Americans are waking up to the fact that we've been had.

BETWEEN THE LINES:
Chris, we have seen a succession of legislation in Washington D.C. that many characterize as tepid and mostly just fig leaf attempts at reforming the financial system that imploded on us a few years ago and really put so much wealth down a black hole. As people look at what's going on in terms of the loss of their wealth, are people prepared for more than just papered over, tepid reform? Do you think people really are ready for some substantial restructuring of our system, both in terms of politics and economics?

CHRIS HEDGES:
There has been no restraint of the criminal activity of Wall Street. Companies like Goldman Sach engaged in clear fraud. They sold subprime mortgages to people they knew couldn't pay it back, and then repackaged it as assets, betting against it through AIG. It's completely fraudulent and criminal behavior. And the taxpayer – courtesy of Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson and others – bail them out for everything that they lost. Everything that AIG lost $170 billion. And the only person who goes to jail is Bernie Madoff, because of course, he steals from rich people. It's a really staggering state of affairs, and not only has Wall Street in any way been regulated, not only have they orchestrated the largest transference of wealth upwards in American history, but they've gone back to playing exactly the same games they played before. In the 17th century, speculators were hung, speculation was a crime, it was a capital crime. And 21st century America, they run the government.

BETWEEN THE LINES:
Chris, what are the connections you see between what's unfolding in downtown New York City right now with the occupation of Wall Street right now and the protests we've seen change regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and certainly the massive protests we've seen across Europe in places like Athens and Madrid. We've also, of course, seen a lot of response to the attacks on unionism in Wisconsin and Ohio. What are the connections you see?

CHRIS HEDGES:
The similarity between this protest and the ones in the Arab world is that they're young. Most of these kids are in their 20s, they are primarily white, well-educated men and women who did everything right, got and finished with their university degrees and realized there was no place for them in the economy at all. That they've been had. And that's a similar kind of anger that we saw in Europe, and are seeing throughout the Arab world.

And the other similarity is that they're tech savvy. They have a sort of ad hoc media center where, as the Egyptian organizers did, they're very careful about recording what happens to them and the police brutality on Saturday night was quite severe, but they caught it all with their cameras and put it out over the Internet where people can see it. And I think a lot of people were pretty shocked at how brutal the New York City police were in terms of their treatment of peaceful protesters who had not violated any laws: pepper-spraying young women until they were screaming and were blind, handcuffing people and then knocking them off their feet so that they fall face down on the asphalt, pounding their heads into the ground.

It was pretty amazing scenes and I encourage all of your listeners to go to either Adbuster's website or Occupy Wall Street and take a look at it because it is very disturbing stuff.

And I think that's a window into how frightened the power elite is, either subconscious or overtly. They have to realize that 99 percent of Americans are being fleeced by these corporate leviathans and should that consciousness spread outwards quickly, then the power elite is in big, big trouble and I hope it does and I hope this is the movement that does it.

BETWEEN THE LINES:
Chris, what advice do you have for the young people and everyone else who's attracted to these long term actions with serious consequences for the participants?

CHRIS HEDGES:
Well, this is all we have left. The system is broken, it doesn't work, civil disobedience is the only mechanism we have by which we can effect change. And if we don't use it, if we remain complacent and passive things are only going to get worse and worse and worse. Social networking is very useful in terms of communications, it's useless in terms of activism. The only way to carry out meaningful action and effect change is finally with your bodies. And if you can get to Liberty Plaza in New York, get there. And there's talk now of occupying financial zones in cities like Chicago and San Francisco, now is not the time to remain complacent.

OccupyTogether.org Compilation of other Occupy groups nationwide, includes advice on nonviolent organizing, how to follow on Twitter and Facebook. This site was started Friday, Sept. 23, 2011 and has grown practically overnight. Some events may overlap with site mentioned below. Follow on Facebook: OccupyTogether and Twitter @OccupyTogether

Occupythenation.org: Compilation of other Occupy groups nationwide - protest tips (Group is more involved in "engaging police"; be aware of potential for police action)